I’m a slight Pinterest addict, it’s truly amazing the hours that I waste looking at stuff that I have no lots of interest in! A few months ago before the move I was looking for interior inspiration, as I was hoping that I was going to be allowed to make a few feature walls with paint, turns out that was a mega no-no but I did come across this instead.
I saw this and thought to myself, ‘I MUST HAVE THIS’. Then I naturally came to the conclusion that this would be EASY (note, whenever I ever think anything is easy it is almost certainly the furthest thing from easy) and I wont lie, it turns out kind of expensive too but the majority of the cost went on the lights so if you could get them out of season cheap at a yard sale for a dollar or on clearance at the Wal-Marts for $5, then do it! So I bought a curtain pole and then went to eBay and found everything else I needed under (mostly considered as wedding supplies).
Heres what you’ll need to make your own fairy lights wall light or Christmas lights wall light or super girly never going to scare off every man wall light.
Required supplies:
- Curtain pole – I choose silver but any color to match your scheme will do (£15)
- Christmas lights/fairy lights – BUY more than you think you’ll need. Ultimately I went for outdoor lights (no specific reason and I figured if the project went to crap I could wrap a tree instead in lights), I choose a line of 120 lights over 6 meters and a line of 100 Icicle lights over 2 meters, both with white cord, as I didn’t want it to be overly obvious when you look at the wall, ie being distracted by black cord. (€21.95 + €26.95 + 7.98 postage = €56.88!!!)
- Fishing line (clear) – this is to attach everything to your curtain pole, make sure its a thicker line to hold the weight (£5)
- 3000 Silver Self-Adhesive Mirror Tiles which were 150 x 100mm per sheet or 5 X 5mm each tile(£5.49)
- 150 Silver Self-Adhesive Mirror Mosaic Tiles which were 150 x 100mm per sheet or 10 X 10mm each tile(£2.68)
- 99FT CLEAR Diamond Strand Acrylic Garland (£7.99)
- 60m WHITE Hanging String Acrylic Pearl Beads (£9.40)
- Overall total cost for this project: around £97 give or take with the exchange rate, which means it is quite pricey but in reality I probably would have spent a similar amount on paint or wall paper and accessories etc to creat it.
- The overall time for the project is about a day, I did it over several days, as it turned out I didn’t have all the required supplies etc but I think it did really take me around 10 hours to do it all.
Now the ‘how to’ on creating this light feature:
1. Attach your curtain pole to the wall. I wanted mine to be directly above my bed, which was between my two bedside cabinets. (tip: make sure its level)
2. I ran first (single) line of lights along the pole. I thought I could do it more like \ / \ / along the pole with the lights but rather quickly realised that I didn’t have enough lights to make this work and look right, so realised that I needed icicle lights or something similar to give it the drapey light effect. 
3. The next step was taking the 99FT CLEAR Diamond Strand Acrylic Garland cutting it in half and then half again – 4 pieces (this makes it much easier to loop around the pole, as strand wouldn’t go around the pole as it was) and then looping it around the pole. Wont lie, looks rather unimpressive now. I did also take a tiny piece of double-sided tape and attach the two ends in the middle of the pole together. This was with 2 of the pieces on the pole.
4. Now to make it all SPARKLY, take the 60m WHITE Hanging String Acrylic Pearl Beads , cut it into 3 foot/1 meter lengths (which gave me 60 lengths) and start attaching the self adhesive mosaic tiles to the line, take 2 and push the sticky backs together, I used a combination of large tiles (2-4 tiles per strand length) and about 12 small tiles per strand, randomly putting them on as I went, I didn’t want to have the mirrors at the same point on every strand. They weren’t as sticky as I was hoping for and did have them not sticking together as well as I wanted but I carried on, you’ll need to do the same. This did take me a good few hours (maybe 4?). DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP, it gives it the reflection and shine that you need! Oh and I didnt use all the small tiles at all, I have probably more than half left, so I could have gone a bit more wild than I did.
As you can see, I was making my lengths and laid them on the floor and then moved them around, when I did a LOAD of the mosaic tiles fell off… be prepared for this, unless you want to hot glue them on or use something stronger than the adhesive tape that is on them.
5. Now to attach your lengths that you’ve created. Take the fishing line and attach it to the top of your strand, below one of your little pearls, so that it has something to anchor it on the line. Now tie it onto the pole, make sure that you tie the fishing line under the lights and acrylic strand, so that it is purely tied onto pole and nothing else. My overall rod length was 66 inches long, so I started in at 3 inches on one side and put them every inch, finishing 3 inches in on the other side. This was how it looks at the half way point.
This is after I attached all 60 strands, FINALLY! I thought I was done… thought being the key word. When the sun hits the mirrors, the reflection is fantastic (which you can see on some of the tiles)! I won’t lie, I’ve upgraded in bed and now have a super king which is mega (six and a half feet wide), so I’m sure you could make this on a much smaller scale!
I turned on the lights and thought ‘<insert several expletives> I need more lights’ and realised that I wasn’t done at all. 
Finally my icicle lights arrived and I attached them on with more fishing wire, making sure they were attached to the pole and not everything else on the pole. The icicle lines were tied up to make sure they didn’t tangle, so I had to hold the top of the icicle and then pull on the bottle to make them more straight, be careful if you have to also do this.
This is when I turned on all the lights, I was much more pleased with what I saw. It gives more of a fairy light feel, as you can see the cats helped me and vaguely gave a sign of approval. As you can see on the bottom right, I have a LOT of cords as a result of the lights, bedside lights, etc, so several extension leads are required for this.
This is how it glows at night in the dark, which I’m really pleased with, whilst it’s not totally comparable with the original Pinterest post that I found, I have to say that Im really pleased with the way it came out and consider it a Pinterest WIN!
Adventures of a Cat Lady 